Lula Owl Gloyne

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Lula Owl Gloyne (* 1891 in Qualla Boundary , North Carolina , † April 17, 1985 in North Carolina) was the first Registered Nurse of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and one of the first Native American nurses in the United States of America . She worked all her life to improve the health conditions for the Indians and especially the Cherokee in the Qualla Boundary.

Historical trauma to the Cherokee

Flag of the Eastern Band Cherokee

Before the white settlers and prospectors penetrated the southern Appalachians , the Cherokee lived there in large groups. Several contracts and agreements were made to separate the areas of the two groups, but these were repeatedly violated by the settlers. The resulting wars and imported diseases such as smallpox and measles decimated the tribe. Eventually, the Cherokee were rounded up by federal authorities and forced to leave their ancestral territories. The walk to their assigned areas in Oklahoma went down in history as the path of tears . The few hundred Cherokee who remained or fled in the east formed the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and stayed near Cherokee, North Carolina in the Qualla Boundary.

After the Civil War and the decades that followed, the rural areas in the mountains were marked by extreme poverty, while white people had little electricity, paved roads and running water, conditions for the Cherokee were even worse. By 1900, the Cherokee tribe had shrunk to fewer than 10,000 people and were rejected by both their white and African American neighbors. In order to “help” the Indians, Christian missionaries and later the government founded boarding schools for the Indian children; these should serve to assimilate the Indians and to forget their culture and language. Lula Owl Gloyne was born in this environment.

Childhood, youth and education

Cherokee children in traditional clothing, photographed 1939

Lula Owl Gloyne was born as Lucy Ann Owl in 1891 in the Qualla Boundary, the Cherokee (eng. Land trust ) area in North Carolina. She was the eldest of ten children of Daniel Lloyd Owl, a Cherokee blacksmith, and Nettie Harris Owl, a basket maker and potter from the Catawba . Although Gloyne should actually be counted among the Catawba according to the Native American traditional matrilineal family order, the Cherokee des Eastern Band had appropriated, in order to preserve their tribe, to count the children of Cherokee men as belonging to the Cherokee as well. Gloyne's parents spoke English at home as neither of them could understand the other tribal language. According to Gloynes' granddaughter, Mary Wachacha, this resulted in the family's seven surviving children pursuing professional careers and achieving their goals.

Gloyne attended the Qualla Boundary School of Mission and after graduation transferred to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia . As one of the first colleges to open, Hampton opened in 1868 to educate Afro-Americans after the Civil War. The central task of the historically Afro-American institute was to train teachers who should return to their communities in order to raise the level of education of the black population. From 1878 to 1923, the institute undertook a one-off experiment to teach students from two different ethnic groups together and also accepted Indian students. Over 1,000 Native American students from more than 20 tribes were graduating from Hampton at the time. Gloyne finished her education there in 1914 and taught for a year at a Catawba school in Rock Hill, South Carolina .

Gloyne decided to begin training as a nurse and went to the Chestnut Hill Hospital School of Nursing in Philadelphia . The students at the school were encouraged to attend church services regularly, but the Southern Baptist Church , of which Gloyne was a member, was too far away. Instead, she attended St. Paul's Episcopal Church . The community welcomed them and supported them with clothing and money. After graduating as the first Registered Nurse of the EBCI in 1916, the Gloyne Parish helped Gloyne to a job as a school nurse at St. Elizabeth's Episcopal School in the Sioux Standing Rock Reservation in Wakapala , South Dakota .

First World War

In 1917 the United States entered the First World War one. All registered nurses were asked by the Red Cross and the US Army Nurse Corps to support their country during the war. Gloyne volunteered and wanted to go to Europe to serve in a field hospital, but during the initial examination it was found that she was suffering from seasickness and could not be shipped overseas. Instead, she was sent to Camp Lewis , Washington state, as a second lieutenant . Gloyne was the only Native American officer who served during the First World War.

While in South Dakota, Gloyne met Jack Gloyne, a soldier on his way to Camp Lewis. When they met again at Camp Lewis, they became a couple. In the Army, however, the connection between officers and crew degrees was forbidden as "fraternization". Despite the ban, the two were secretly married in 1918. After a brief stay in Oklahoma , the couple moved to Cherokee to settle there.

Work in Cherokee

Main Street in Cherokee, NC

At the time the Gloynes moved to Cherokee, there was no hospital or full-time doctor. The only professional help the Qualla Boundary residents had was Gloyne. At first she worked without pay and had to walk to her patients. In the absence of a doctor, Gloyne took on all kinds of medical and nursing care.

Gloyne's desire to provide the EBCI with adequate medical care took her to Washington, DC There she spoke to the Indian Health Service officers . In 1934, their demands for better health care for their people were met and a hospital opened for nine women and six men. In addition, the hospital was regularly visited by a doctor and Gloyne was appointed senior nurse. On the side, Gloyne still looked after her outpatients and cared for them, provided terminal care and offered maternity care. With her salary from the Indian Health Service , Gloyne bought a horse. The government later provided her with a car so she could visit her patients.

Although the government tried to largely assimilate the Cherokee, many of them mistrusted the health services offered. Despite the cultural uprooting, traditional medicine seemed more trustworthy to them than white medicine. There was also a belief that white doctors transmitted epidemic diseases. Gloyne played an important mediating role and built trust in the Cherokees with the hospital and white doctors. After initially almost all births took place in the home environment, with a high death rate among newborns, in the course of the 1930s almost half of the births were in hospital or at least with the help of a midwife.

Statistical changes

As part of Gloynes efforts in Washington DC, a comprehensive health study of the EBCI in the Qualla Boundary was commissioned in 1933. The US Public Health Service , the Department of Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior, the North Carolina Tuberculosis Sanatorium, and the North Carolina Health Department worked together to determine what health care needs were and what state or federal responsibilities arose. More than 900 Cherokees of all ages received a full medical and dental exam, as well as vaccinations for smallpox, diphtheria and typhoid . The studies showed that nine percent of those examined had active tuberculosis and 4.6 percent had syphilis . In addition, an above-average number of people suffered from trachoma , an inflammatory eye disease.

Forty years later, in 1972, another report from the North Carolina Health Department stated that tuberculosis and syphilis were rare problems for the indigenous people in the Qualla Boundary. The major public health problems at the time were diabetes mellitus , car accidents, murder, suicide and tooth decay in children.

Life after 1935

Logo of the outdoor drama Unto these Hills in which Goyle helped as a nurse

The Gloynes had four children. When her husband Jack died, Gloyne left Qualla Boundary and settled in Miami, Oklahoma , and worked at the Wyandotte Indian School and Clinic . In 1936 Gloyne had a serious accident while on an ambulance trip. At first it was unclear whether she would ever be able to walk again, but she gradually recovered. She returned to Cherokee to be with her family and gradually resumed her work as a nurse.

Gloyne took on private nursing duties, worked in the hospital and took on leadership roles in the nearby towns of Sylva and Bryson City . She was also available as a nurse for the outdoor play Unto These Hills , which told the story of the path of tears in the summer months. She retired from active care at 77 but remained an active member of the Cherokee Ward until her death. She died on April 17, 1985.

legacy

In 1985 Gloyne was nominated for the Distinguished Women of North Carolina Award . The Cherokee named her a Beloved Woman , one of only three women to ever receive this title. Gloyne was inducted into the North Carolina Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 2015 . Her life's work inspired a number of young Cherokee women to take up the nursing profession, including Ernestine Sharon Walkingstick , who also ran and initiated hospitals. Her daughter, Mollie Blankenship, was the first woman to be elected to a Cherokee tribal council, and her other daughter, Mary Gloyne Byler, is a noted Cherokee writer and teacher.

literature

  • John R. Finger: Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of the Cherokee in the Twentieth Century. University of Nebraska Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-8032-1985-4 (English)
  • Phoebe Ann Pollitt: African American and Cherokee Nurses in Appalachia: A History, 1900-1965. McFarland, 2016, ISBN 978-0-7864-7965-8 (English)
  • Janet McAdams, Geary Hobson, Kathryn Walkiewicz: The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal. University of Oklahoma Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-8061-4136-7 (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David M. Wishart: Evidence of Surplus Production in the Cherokee Nation Prior to Removal . In: Journal of Economic History. Volume 55, No. 1, 1995, p. 120 (English)
  2. ^ Russell Thornton, C. Matthew Snipp, Nancy Breen: The Cherokees: A Population History. University of Nebraska Press, 1992, ISBN 0-8032-9410-7 , Resurgence and Removal: 1800 to 1840, p. 70 (English)
  3. ↑ Vicki Rozema: Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation. 2nd Edition. John F. Blair Publ., 2007, ISBN 0-89587-346-X , pp. 43–45 (English)
  4. ^ A b c Janet McAdams, Geary Hobson, Kathryn Walkiewicz: The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal. University of Oklahoma Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-8061-4136-7 , pp. 83 ff. (English)
  5. ^ Phoebe Ann Pollitt: African American and Cherokee Nurses in Appalachia: A History, 1900-1965. McFarland, 2016, ISBN 978-0-7864-7965-8 , p. 95 (English)
  6. ^ Donal Lindsey: Indians at Hampton Institute, 1877-1923. University of Illinois Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-2520-2106-0
  7. ^ A b c Phoebe Ann Pollitt: African American and Cherokee Nurses in Appalachia: A History, 1900-1965. McFarland, 2016, ISBN 978-0-7864-7965-8 , p. 96 (English)
  8. ^ John R. Finger: Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of the Cherokee in the Twentieth Century. University of Nebraska Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-8032-1985-4 , p. 66 (English)
  9. ↑ .S. Carden: Former Boundary Field Nurse Got First Hospital Opened. The Sylva Herald, November 17, 1983, pp. 4-5. (English)
  10. ^ Phoebe Ann Pollitt: African American and Cherokee Nurses in Appalachia: A History, 1900-1965. McFarland, 2016, ISBN 978-0-7864-7965-8 , pp. 97-98 (English)
  11. ^ John R. Finger: Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of the Cherokee in the Twentieth Century. University of Nebraska Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-8032-1985-4 , p. 64 (English)
  12. ^ John R. Finger: Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of the Cherokee in the Twentieth Century. University of Nebraska Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-8032-1985-4 , p. 65 (English)
  13. ^ North Carolina Department of Health: Health Work Among the Cherokee Indians. North Carolina Health Bulletin, 1933 pp. 6-8 (English)
  14. ↑ UNC Health Sciences Library: Health Bulletin April 1972 pp. 8–11 (English)
  15. ↑ The One Feather: Lula Owl Gloyne inducted into North Carolina Nurses Association Hall of Fame published October 13, 2015, accessed July 7, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Gloyne, Lula Owl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lula Owl (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Native American nurse
DATE OF BIRTH 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Qualla Boundary , North Carolina
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1985
Place of death North Carolina
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